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Abstract
The aim of this paper is to compare and contrast modernist housing projects in Western and Eastern Blocs built in the period of accelerated urban growth that took place mainly in the 1960s and 1970s. The obvious starting point is that cities in the Eastern Bloc were different from Western cities because of the distinct nature of their urban policies, the centrally planned economy, the absence of a free land market, the impact of industrialization on building construction, etc. However, there are many concepts in urban planning and design, as well as urban processes and urban forms, shared by both ideological systems and that can be clearly recognized in housing estates from that period.
This paper offers a comparative perspective of the nature of some of those modern Housing Estates built on both sides of the Iron Curtain such as Grands Ensembles in France, Großsiedlungen in Germany, Polígonos de viviendas in Spain, or Socialist Housing Estates equivalents in Eastern Bloc countries. The goal is to understand how mass housing forms were related to the modernist international urban culture of the Athens Charter and what was the role of urban design in the significant loss of environmental quality appreciable either in the West or in the East in those years of accelerated urban growth almost everywhere in Europe.
Acknowledgements
This article is an edited and extended version of the paper given at the 12th International Conference on Urban History Cities in Europe, Cities in the World, European Association for Urban History, Lisbon, Portugal, 3–6 September 2014 (see note 2). This research has been carried out within the framework of the research project UR_HESP (Urban Regeneration of Housing Estates in Spain, project number I+D+i BIA2014–60059-R) directed by the authors of this text and granted by the Ministry of Economy, Competitiveness of Spain. The authors thank Lydia and Laurent Coudroy de Lille de Lille for their help as well as the anonymous reviewers and the Editor-in-Chief of Planning Perspectives for their critical yet constructive comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Javier Monclús (Zaragoza, 1951) is Dr Architect and Full Professor of Urbanism at the School of Engineering and Architecture, University of Zaragoza (Spain), where he is now Chair of the Department of Architecture. Professor of Urbanism at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Barcelona (1980–2005). He was previously a planner and worked with the Consortium Zaragoza Expo 2008 (2005–2009). He has published widely on Planning, Urban Design and Urban Planning History issues, among them: “International Exhibitions and Urban Design Paradigms,” in M. Amati, R. Freestone, eds., Exhibitions and the Development of Modern Planning Culture (2014); International Exhibitions and Urbanism: The Zaragoza Expo 2008 Project (2009); and co-edited Culture, Urbanism and Planning (2006). He is member of the Editorial Board of Planning Perspectives and was the 11th International Planning History Society's (IPHS) Conference Convenor (Barcelona 2004). He is interested in urban projects, landscape urbanism, planning history and theories of urbanism.
Carmen Díez Medina (Madrid, 1962) is architect (ETSA Madrid, 1988). Ph.D. at the Technische Universität Wien, TU (1992–1996), Fakultät für Raumplanung und Architektur. Collaborating architect by Nigst, Hubmann&Vass in Viena (1998–1994) and by Rafael Moneo in Madrid (1996–2001). Chair of the Department of Theory and Projects in Architecture and Urbanism in the University CEU San Pablo, Madrid (2007–2009). Since 2009 she is Associate Professor of Architectural History of the Department of Architecture at the School of Engineering and Architecture, University of Zaragoza (Spain). She has lectured at doctorate courses and international seminars at the Politecnico di Milano, Technische Universität Kaiserslautern, Seconda Università degli Studi di Napoli Luigi Vanvitelli, Technische Universität Karlsruhe, Moscow Stroganov Akademy and University College Edimburg. Her publications focus on architectural history, social housing and cultural landscapes. At the moment both authors are directing a research project granted by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness on urban regeneration in Spanish mass housing estates.
Notes
1. Goldzamt, Urbanistyka krajów socjalistycznych. In this book Goldzamt develops social and socialist ideas that had previously addressed in earlier publications such as William Morris and the Social Origins of Modern Architecture (Warsaw, 1967) or Social Aspects of Town Planning and Housing in Italy (Warsaw, 1968).
2. ‘Housing estate’, is a concept which lacks a simple definition and has not even a single meaning in every country. Some authors refer to ‘areas of concentrated high-rise housing’, but this is not enough if we want to understand its urban meaning. It is on French Grands Ensembles where we can find a deeper reflection on the meaning of the concept: ‘L'expression ne désigne pas un mode d'edification, mais plutôt une forme et un payssage caractérisé para un regroupment de barres et de tours sur un espace soumis aux règles du zonage’, Dufaux and Fourcaut, Grands Ensembles and Vieillard-Baron, “L'origine des grands ensembles.” From a planning history approach there is a definition on housing estates or Polígonos de Viviendas in Spain: ‘Unified developments, made by similar tower and slabs ensembles built in a short time on unified plots of land, through a unified management and a global Project’, Terán, Historia del Urbanismo, Vol. 3, 228.
3. A reduced version of the ideas developed in this text can be found in our paper submitted to the 12th International Conference on Urban History; Cities in Europe, Cities in the World (European Association for Urban History, Lisbon, Portugal, September 3–6, 2014).
4. Among the existing literature some sectorial analysis focused in specific episodes can be mentioned, as AA.VV, 10 Stories of Collective Housing; there are some general studies on soviet cities with a socialist approach, as Goldzamt, Urbanistyka krajów socjalistycznych, an important book that however is not translated in English, or French and Hamilton, The Socialist City and Bater, The Soviet City. Some works tackle post-war urbanism, such as Mumford, The CIAM Discourse; others deal with mass housing estates or grand ensambles in France, as Dufaux and Fourcaut, Grands Ensembles; there are also some global visions on housing estates in the twentieth century in form of grand narrative, such as Hall, Cities of Tomorrow, especially the Chapter 7 “The City of Towers”; some other address more systematic approaches on modern urbanism in the context of planning in the twentieth century, such as Ward, Twentieth-Century City, which gives an international comparative perspective; others pay attention to the varied ways in which architecture and urban planning interacted with the different regimes of welfare provision, such as Swenarton, Avermaete and van den Heuvel, Architecture and Welfare State; a global perspective comparing several cities can be found in Florian Urban, Tower and Slab.
5. ‘Il faut bien distinguer La Charte d'Athènes de sa vulgate;' Paquot et al., “La Charte d'Athènes,” 62.
6. A parallel approach can be found in the case of international expos, which in spite of being ‘exceptional urban episodes’ can be seen, at the same time, as urban design paradigms. Freestone and Amati, Exhibitions and Monclús, “International Exhibitions.”
7. See some of our previous studies on urban forms and housing estates in Western European cities: Monclús et al., Paisajes Urbanos Residenciales; Guàrdia, Monclús and Oyón, Atlas Histórico de Ciudades; Sambricio, La Construcción; Díez, “Zoom In-Zoom Out,” 75–106; Díez, “Sobre la reconstrucción italiana,” 37–44; Díez, “La Influencia Centroeuropea,” 138–61; “El Modelo Vienés,” 172–5; and “Barrio de la Estrella,” Vol. II, 114–5.
8. Koolhaas, Fundamentals. Other recent references to the development of the debate of urban planning cultures in different countries: Freestone and Amati, Exhibitions and Sanyal, Comparative Planning Cultures.
9. RESTATE, Rowlands, Musterd and van Kempen, Mass Housing in Europe. Even if the authors speak about ‘areas of concentrated high-rise housing … post-war developments, carefully planned’, it does not imply that these areas were so ‘well planned’ too.
10. Hebbert, “The Street as Locus,” 581–596.
11. Frampton, Modern Architecture; Mumford, The CIAM Discourse; Fishmann, Urban Utopias; Gold, The Experience of Modernism; and Monclús, “International Exhibitions.”
12. Le Corbusier's Ville Contemporaine (1922) or L. Hilberseimer's Verticalstadt (1924) are paradigmatic examples.
13. Hilpert, Die Funktionelle Stadt.
14. Grundsätze des Städtebaus. Von der Regierung der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik am 27. Juli 1950 beschlossen’ in von Beyme et al., Neue Städte aus Ruinen, 30–1. An English translation of the sixteen principles can be found in Clelland, “From Ideology to Disenchantment,” 41–5. An abstract is available in Strobel, “From Cosmopolitan Fantasies.”
15. Consequently, they are organized with a meaningful structure. Instead of the four key functions of the city proposed in the Athens Charter, the socialist version deals first with the historical nature of the city; second, with ‘housing estate’ forms and desirable characteristics; third, with the urban ‘atmosphere’ of the city (as opposed to the non-urban atmosphere of the garden city); fourth, with the basis for a specific urban design in contrast to more abstract urban diagrams.
16. Strobel, “From Cosmopolitan Fantasies,” 128.
17. We could also mention another paradox of historic nature. If we think on the origin of socialist dwelling projects, such as the Red Vienna Höfe, we see how this architectural episode was generally rejected just because of its socialist rhetorical language and the distance from the proposals for a new way of living that the Weimerer Republik was developing. Nevertheless Red Vienna Höfe have stood the test of time and is generally considered a success regarding its urban form. Díez, Complicidades en arquitectura.
18. Mumford, The CIAM Discourse; Mumford, “CIAM Urbanism,” 391–417; Wakeman, “Rethinking Postwar Planning History,” 153–63; Orillard, “The Transnational Building,” 209–29; and Paquot et al., “La Charte d'Athènes, et après”.
19. Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities; Cullen, The Concise Townscape; Alexander, “A City is Not a Tree”; Rossi, The Architecture of the City; Mitscherlich, Die Unwirtlichkeit unserer Städte. Critical views have become established in the reference literature, as in Hall's, Cities of Tomorrow; and other recent works such as Wassenberg, Large Housing Estates. Among the critical visions against the tower and slab urbanism, some architects as Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani propose the recovering of the urban block even in the outskirts of the city. Lampugnani, “Stadt oder Suburbia?”, 10–27.
20. López de Lucio, Vivienda colectiva, 330.
21. ‘It is not the priest – and this is how we must consider the precursors of functionalism – who failed, but the believers who, with their absolutism and lack of imagination, failed to have the courage to make a critical adaptation of their mission'; Bollerey, “Decorations Have Become Superfluous,” 45.
22. Urban, Tower and Slab, 17.
23. Ward, Planning the Twentieth-Century City, 241.
24. Hall, Cities of Tomorrow.
25. Ibid., 204–28.
26. Banham, “Park Hill. Sheffield”; see also Banham, Megastructure.
27. Gold, The Practice of Modernism, 170.
28. However, the middle-size scale allows an easier control of the public spaces and facilitate the development of regeneration programmes. About the regeneration that is already being carried out, see Urbansplash transformation, Riba Publishing http://www.urbansplash.co.uk/residential/park-hill (last accessed May 2015).
29. Wagenaar, Town Planning, 430; Ibelings, 20th Century Urban Design; Helleman and Wassenberg, “Tomorrow's Idealistic City,” 3–17.
30. Galindo, Cornelis van Eesteren.
31. The major part of the housing estate has been demolished and replaced by new housing and shopping areas. Works started at the beginning of the 1980s. It is considered one of the main regeneration projects of a modernist European housing estate.
32. Huge open spaces, traffic segregation (three levels), a high number of housing units (13,000 dwellings in 10-storey high-rise apartments) with minimal typological variations, mega corridor structures, radical geometry, etc.
33. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL, 863.
34. France deserves a special attention because of the particular episode of the grands ensembles, and the ZUPs (Priority Urban Zones). Both initiatives resulted in a sharp increase in construction. The adoption of modern urban renewal criteria in parallel to the new dominant urban forms in the banlieues (residential suburbs), make Paris an exceptional case study. Dufaux and Fourcaut, Grands Ensembles.
35. Ibid. Several issues of the journal Urbanisme have focused on this subject: “Le grand ensemble, histoire et devenir”, Urbanisme 322, 2002; “La Charte d'Athènes et après?”, Urbanisme 332; “Paris/Banlieues”, Urbanisme 333, 2003. André Bloc, head of the prestigious journal L'Architecture d'Aujour-Hui, criticized the grands ensembles as “cities without soul”, as early as 1962 (quoted by Piccinato, La arquitectura contemporánea en Francia, 154; Florian Urban dates the shift of public opinion between 1958 and 1962; and Urban, Tower and Slab, 51).
36. Merlin, Les villes nouvelles en France, 330; 1945–1975, Une histoire de l'habitat. 40 ensembles «Patrimoine du XX siècle», Exposition présentée à La Maison de l'architecture en Île-de-France, du 5 juillet au 15 septembre 2011; Thomé, Créateurs d'utopies and Stébé, “Les Grands Ensembles.”
37. Bielka and Beck, Heimat Großsiedlung. See specially Mäckler, “Städtebauliches Gutachterverfahren Gropiusstadt Süd,” 244–51.
38. Bodenschatz, Städtebau in Berlin.
39. Urban, Tower and Slab, 59.
40. With emphasys in ‘projects’, rather than in ‘plans’. Benevolo, Longo, and Melograni, I modelli di progettazione.
41. As Forte Quezzi in Genova, Quartiere Comasina in Milan, Quartiere San Polo in Brescia, Zen in Palermo, Rozzon Melara in Trieste, Le Vele di Scampia in Napoli, Tor Vergata in Rom, etc.
42. L'architettura cronache e storia 248, 78–88. The housing estate was built by GESCAL, Gestione case per lavoratori (management of social housing), a fund created in 1963 gathering the heritage of INA-casa.
43. Montaldo, “Quartiere Gescal di Quarto Cagnino,” 80–5.
44. Lucchini, “The Quarto Cagnino District in Milan (1964–1973).”
45. Hebbert, “Town Planning vs Urbanismo.”
46. Moneo, Vivienda y Urbanismo en España.
47. Cortés, “Modernidad y vivienda en España.”
48. Ferrer, “The Undeserved Credit of the Housing Estate.”
49. See López de Lucio, “El Gran San Blas” and Sambricio and Lampreave, 100 años de historia de la intervención, 136.
50. See AA.VV, Gran San Blas.
51. Busquets, La construcción urbanística, 264.
52. Tena, Universalidad y adecuación en la obra de LIGS, 137–61.
53. Ramos, “Polígonos de vivienda.”
54. Monclús, Labarta, and Díez, Proposals for Balsas de Ebro Viejo.
55. Bosma, “New Socialist Cities,” 311.
56. Quilici, Ciudad rusa y ciudad soviética, 262–3.
57. Bater, The Soviet City, 27–8 (1. Limited city size, 2. State control of housing, 3. Planned development of residential areas, 4. Spatial equity in the distribution of items of collective consumption, 5. Limited journey to work. 6. Stringent land-use zoning, 7. Rationalized traffic flow, 8. Extensive green space, 9. Symbolism and the central city, 10. Town planning as an integral part of national planning).
58. In the Moscow Plan (1935) these microrayon units (8000–12,000 residents) are composed by five to eight ‘super blocks’ or living complexes, each with a population of 1000–1500 inhabitants. See Bater, The Soviet City, 102. Some precisions on Moscow Plan and the role of kvartal or super block can be found in Quilici, Ciudad rusa y ciudad soviética, 263; see also Minkevičius, Cities Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow; and also Dremaite and Petrulis, “Modernism in Soviet Lithuania.”
59. Gutnov et al., The Ideal Communist City.
60. Goldzamt, El urbanismo en la Europa socialista.
61. ‘In some cases, though, a valuable living environment was achieved, but almost entirely thanks to the concepts of progressive urbanism, rather than through the architecture of individual blocks', Moravčíková, “Concentrated Responses,” 22–9.
62. “Ces colonies, cités, prototypes de la construction standarisée sont donc avant tout dans leurs fondements une expression de la modernité europeene, et non du “socialisme””, Dufaux and Fourcaut, Le monde des grands ensembles. Coudroy de Lille, “Une ideologie du pré-fabriqué?,” 90–1.
63. Ward, “Soviet Communism,” 499–524.
64. The Eratrea project was presented in the Czech pavilion of the 1967 International Montreal Expo (E. Goldzamt, op. cit., p. 316); in Petržalone took place one of the main international competitions on a large-scale housing estate in 1967; the Lazdynai residential district built in Vilnius, Lituania, reveals French, Swedish, and Finnish urban planning influences, see Dremaite and Petrulis, “Modernism in Soviet Lithuania.”
65. “La dimension utopique était en comparaison beaucoup plus forte dans les ouvrages et réalisations de l'entre-deux-guerres en Europe centrale », “Une ideologie du pré-fabriqué?,” 92.
66. Dufaux and Fourcaut, Le monde des grands ensembles. Amestoy, “Les Grands Ensembles en Russie.”
67. “Neither were these buildings so different, however, from the grands ensembles built around Paris, Lyon and other French cities,” Waley, “From Modernist to Market Urbanism,” 209–35.
68. Wakeman, “Rethinking Postwar Planning History,” 153–63.
69. Ikonnikov, Russian Architecture, 282.
70. See Moscow Microrayon Masterplan Development: http://microrayon.wikispaces.com/Moscow+Microrayon+Masterplan+Development, accessed July 2014.
71. Something similar happened in Spain during the first years of Franco Dictatorship, particularly in Madrid. From 1939 to the mid-fifties, the housing estates promoted by the State were compact forms coinciding with the city blocks.
72. Urban, Tower and Slab, 69.
73. Diefendorf, Rebuilding Europe's Bombed Cities. von Beyme, “Reconstruction in the German Democratic Republic,” 192.
74. Schuemer-Strucksberg, “Socialist Large Scale Estates in East Berlin.”
75. Goldzamt emphasizes the contribution of Polish architects to the Athens Charter, such as Syrkus, Brukalski, and Piotrowski. Goldzamt, El urbanismo en la Europa socialista, 171.
76. Ibid., 169–71.
77. The word ‘mikrorayon’ was never adopted in Poland. Instead of it, the Polish word ‘osiedle’, which was redefined by Polish ‘modern’ architects before the war was always used. We thank Lydia Coudroy de Lille for this information.
78. Goldzamt, El urbanismo en la Europa socialista, 266–7.
79. Ibidem, 262–3.
80. Volodymyr-Durmanov, “Housing Development.”
81. Some data can illustrate the process:
From 1965 to 1973 the share of large-panel buildings in state-constructed and co-operatively constructed housing increased from 29% to 44%, which, considering all housing production was an increase from 19% to 31%. By 1975, about forty types of large-panel buildings had been developed. At the end of the 1970s the famous 5 and 12-storey series using pre-fabricated construction were introduced. The present high-rise type dominant in the Ukraine is the so-called multi-section building with 5 or more sections of 5 or 9-storeys.
82. Bielka and Beck, Heimat Großsiedlung. Cherkes, “Socialist Birth and Afterlife,” 54–63.
83. Located on the left bank of the Dnieper River in a territory panned out with sand, it was thought as a district without private cars, served by buses and river boats on Dnieper and canal.
84. Wassenberg, Large Housing Estates.
85. Koolhaas, “What Ever Happened to Urbanism?,” 959/971.
86. RESTATE: good practices and new visions for sustainable neighbourhoods and cities, see Rowlands, Musterd and van Kempen, Mass Housing in Europe.
87. Reimann and Henselmann, Briefwechsel; Pérez Andújar, Paseos con mi madre; Marjetica Potrč, “Pristhtina House”, in Kjeldsen, Frontiers of Architecture III–IV: Living, 152.